Student Ideas

This page is for recording impressions of the 8/29 and 9/5 advisories and student-generated project ideas.

Brian

• Guitar Lessons
• Chinquapin Theme Song on Garageband
• Choreograph a Dance
• Boys and girls switch residence roles: girls stay on-campus, boys commute each day
• Photography Class
• Architecture w/ Google Sketch-Up
• Landscaping with Improved Drainage (out by ball field)
• World's Biggest Cookie (cooked w/ solar oven)
• Video about life at Chinquapin
• Singing performance
• Making pizza
• Chinquapin Soap Opera
• Body Art: Henna hand art, math, geometry, sci, vocab, quotes, action words! send a message!
• Cooking for Cultures: pick 5 countries and fix a staple meal from each culture, serve on different days.
• Human Video: No dialogue, people act out message (truly a universal language!), music background OK.

Craig

• Chinquapin, The Musical
• Design a classroom for Optimal Learning
• History/Evolution of break dance and/or hip hop
• Interpretive break dance and/or hip hop performance
• Scale model of Chinquapin campus
• Game of Chinquapin (like Monopoly, Life, Trivial Pursuit, Twister, etc.)
• Life after Chinquapin (find out where alumni and former teachers are and what they are doing)
• A Week in the Life of a Chinquapin student
• Chinquapin through the decades (using songs, dance, fashion, television/movie characters, historical/political events from the last 40 years to help tell the story of Chinquapin through the last 40 years)

Dorothy

• Teach Home Ec-cooking
• Teach SLC Training to Middle School (especially 6th grade)
• Teach a Class-example:12th teach 10th
• Build a rocket
• Make "safe" explosions
• Make a water balloon launcher
• Have a poetry session
• Rock climb
• Paint the campus
• Make bigger school signs
• Make a torpedo
• Build a playground/park
• Build a sandcastle contest
• Build a statue to honor Bill and Kathy
• Make up a new sport and play it
• Carve trees
• Design clothes/shoes
• Build a campus clock
• Build a maze
• Design a computer
• Make a comic book
• Make a "History of Chinquapin" wall
• Begin a new tradition
• Class tournaments
• Make strange things from strange things -dig in the recycle bin
• Make a city/world
• Make books
• Make a safe for the dorms/lounge

Julie

Overall, my advisory group was *incredibly* enthusiastic about creativity week. Most of the interest seemed to center around the subjects of science (biology and physics), history, and mythology (Greek, Central American, and Egyptian). Here are some of the things they thought up:

• Creating a "mini-river" irrigation system for the 7th grade gardens
• Terrarium with carniverous plants
• Model of the brain that "activates/animates" to show how the brain actually works (e.g., a certain part would light up if stimulated)
• History of shoes - researching the history of footwear and replicating past styles (possibly a website to show the progression?)
• Does music make plants grow faster?
• What really happened to the Maya? (possibly a mural of Mayan history, or building a model of a Mayan temple?)
• Tracking/monitoring physiological responses to external stimuli (e.g., increased bp and heart rate)
• Recreation of the Trojan War (filmed?)
• CSI Chinquapin
• Myth and Legend and Chinquapin - investigating and recording the oral tradition and folklore of the school (e.g., riceman)

Dale

They came up with a lot of ideas, but most of it was among the lines of "Let's make a chair from tin cans" and continued with a variation on that theme.

Kathy

My kids came up with a couple of good things:

• A mural or art piece celebrating Chinquapin’s 40 years – this got into all kinds of ideas including painting the sidewalks with stuff from each class; but that one is a good idea that needs to be developed
• a creative dance incorporating different kinds of dance and that has a message. I like this one because I could probably get someone to do it for a fee and then that would take up 15 to 20 kids and no teachers leaving less kids with each teacher
• something to do with Darfur or Bosnia or Rwanda but the idea being a creative piece that would make more people aware of these human rights issues
• The Failure to Respond would be making a video about the genocides that have occurred in the past few years and how the world has failed to stop them. The main focus would be on Darfur . The video would involve pictures, quotes, footage of students and teachers giving their opinion about the issue. Includes, history, social studies, technology and art.
• Dance – creative dance incorporating different kinds of dance and choreographed with a message.
• Street Stories – Interviewing the homeless out on the streets of Houston and writing down their stories. Putting together a video showing their stories. Includes speech, technology and science and history;
• Hungry Cookie – baking the largest cookie in a solar oven – science, math and cooking skills
• Make it Rain – building an irrigation system for the 7th grade gardens – science, engineering
• Flying Eggs – build rockets that work on pressure; find a way to make your egg survive nature’s gravity; rockets can be decorated;
• Painting the sidewalks – paint 40 sidewalk squares and draw something that represents Chinquapin in each one. Or paint a mural on the front area of the girl’s lounge on the cement between the stairs and the red fire line.
  

Evelyn

The 6th graders were really quiet, and only idea that came out of her advisory was from Victoria. She suggested we fix-up the old bus. A Chinquapin "Partridge Family" bus?

Susan

We had our greatest success when students talked about the things they loved learning on their own outside of school. Though the students felt that we were just getting started when the bell rang, here are some of the ideas that were generated:

• a musical production (several instruments, a chorus, etc.) of a song or songs; create a singing/dancing revue and take it on the road to Children's wards in hospitals
• make a mariachi band; sing songs in Spanish
• build a historical world in Second Life
• something to do with space: write stories about space; collect and publish them
• designing _? (fill in the blank)
• something to do with sports
• something to do with a morgue
• build: a house (Habitat for Humanity), a "green" building, another gym, a playground, a stadium, a doggie day care facility, a concessions stand for games
• invent a cereal
• bake -- or cook -- on a grand scale, as in a banquet for the display day: make a gingerbread house for kids
• make a parachute that works (and test it)
• invent an alphabet
• mural (possibly made of photographs)
• photography: document "Spanish Culture" in photography, photograph nature's relationship to humans
• write a novel or epic poem
• help children in poverty in Africa
• create an ANAWAR Arness campaign
• create a fence to protect the pandas
• make pencils
• create a model or display with parts that move: make a model of the human body (with the insides)
• organize a bicycle protest (about gas consumption)
• make a car from junkyard parts
• investigate singing for your health (and the physics of singing)
• create a historical photobook of the school
• promote child welfare and safety (laws)
• teach younger kids about how to take care of the environment

Ryan

• Cheerleader/Dance Squad
• Dance Classes
• "Dancing with the Faculty" (Ha!)
• Cooking
• Maze
• Design a Building/Build a Miniature Chinquapin
• Hair Styling
• Mural for Bill & Kathy
• Singing Contest
• Make a Movie
• Write a song about Chinquapin
• Domino Waterfall

Dave B

• culinary project
• sewing/quilting project
• environmental project
• songwriting/freestyling/music project
• investigation into pregnancy--either teen pregnancy or prenatal care
• medicine/medical careers project
• inspiration/motivation project
• photography/scrapbook project
• art project (large-scale sculpture or painting)

David H

• Build a go-cart
• Make a "menga" - Japanese cartoon
• Make a rubber-band guitar
• Perform a dance
• Make something so big that in order to see what it is you have to get a bird's eye view
• Mural/Graffiti the gym wall
• Build a fence for the garden
• Build a giant dominoes maze
• Paint the steel metal circle in the roof of the science center
• Set up an electric pump to disperse the collected rainwater at the science center
• Make a giant pizza
• Make a robot dance
• Pimp my ride
• Plant flowers around the baseball field

Bill

• Build playground equipment
• Resurface long table top in library with photo collage of Chinquapin's 40 years; cover with glass top
• Mural for gym wall
• Quilt of Chinquapin moments
• Stained glass "quilt" of Chinquapin moments
• Create Chinquapin cookbook
• Fashion show with student-designed clothes, jewelry, runway
• Build rock wall
• Build solar-powered gocart
• Do I-movie on how a wave pool works
• Historical presentations on 1) Holocaust and 2) Ancient Egypt
• Build better pitching machine
• Build high jump pit
• Create intercom system for classrooms
• Improve drainage
• Build robot dog

Michael

• Recreate a military battle (with paint-ball guns)
• Build a boat, launch it in reservior
• Build a car
• Make a video production about Chinquapin
• Make a Chinquapin Cookbook. Make and test recipies. Serve on Fridays. Intro recipies with Chinquapin history. Design cover. Sell copies as fundraiser.

Mily

• chess class
• kickboxing/self-defense class
• wood-carving campus signs
• jewelry-making with Chinquapin themes for fundraising purposes
• dog show competition - training campus dogs
• ballet performance
• mixing dance genres to create a message
• using paintball art to make pictures/paintings
• cooking prep class for college survival; making the most from the least
• learning how to freestyle/flow
• poster/mirage of what Chinquapin means to students (can be used to decorate classrooms)
• learning to read anime/ designing covers for anime
• swimming lessons
• class quilting - each class makes a quilt, where everyone can sew their personalized square/patch
• building more bird houses to place around campus
• building more benches or seating areas to add around campus
• cutting down tallow(?) trees (that Kathy hates) and making seats out of the stumps out in the soccer field. Seats can then be carved/ painted/ decorated etc.